The Grass Really is Greener on the other Side

As I was scrubbing feed buckets covered with spiders and all the little packages of fast-food flies wrapped in silk to-go boxes, I saw another volunteer at His Barn walk by leading a pony by his chin. The black pony had no halter or lead rope. He followed obediently, like a dog being pulled by his ruff.

Then she walked him to the front yard, the unfenced front yard with a road in front of it, and let him loose. I stood up, shocked.
"Wait... do you mean to let him loose? I mean with no tie or anything?"
Jill, the owner, was off on a trail ride with Asherel while I did my little corner of work to help her out.
The volunteer nodded, "Yes, he just stays."
"But how?"
"Oh he's trained."

Jack, the pony went right to work mowing the lawn. Jill runs the barn on her own with an assortment of volunteers. There is never enough money or hours in the day to do all that is required. I was happy to see she had found a time saving method of keeping her lawn cut.

The sky became dangerously dark, and just as my daughter's group returned, the heavens let loose, and rain gushed from the sky.  Jack came slowly back to the barn and peered in.
"What do you think you are doing?" asked Jill.
Jack looked at his stall, his forelock dripping.
"You aren't done with your job yet," said Jill.
Jack turned and went back to mowing the lawn.
"Doesn't he go in the road?" I asked.

Jack was meandering towards the road. He stood at the side of it and looked back.
JIll watched him.
"No, not unless I am inside and then sometimes I will see him look at the house, and make sure I am not around and then he will cross it."
I watched Jack. The grass on the other side of the road really was greener, and tall, and lush.
"How did you train him to do this?" I asked.
"I made it very unpleasant for him when he stepped in the road, banging pans, yelling, screaming, making noise. And as soon as he stepped back on the yard, I made it quiet and peaceful.It's all about pressure and then removing pressure in training a horse."

I remembered that morning with my Science Olympiad kids. I had invited them out for an afternoon of kayaking as a celebration/thank you for all their hard work this year. I had enough kayaks between our inflatable ones and hard shells for all the kids to be able to kayak together. I was the kayak cop, in my beloved little inflatable. When I saw them bumping each other, and  (in my eyes) tipping perilously as they grabbed at each others' boats, I made a lot of noise. I was employing Jill's horse training method.
"No bashing into each other, and no grabbing each other's boats!" I shrieked, "Those are the rules. If  you follow the rules, I will follow far far behind you. If you don't follow the rules, I will be right on your tail."

They weren't pleased that I was preventing their escalating attempts to dislodge each other into the lake of snapping turtles, but they had no desire for me to be bobbing in their midst either. So they obeyed the rules. They knew the grass was greener on the other side of the rules, but since I was in sight, they thought it best to obey.

But I kept thinking last night about Jack the pony. Well-trained as he is, even a pony figures out that when the Master is not around, he can cross the road to the greener grass. He knows it is wrong, but the enticement is too strong, the scent of the succulent thick grass too overpowering.  Similarly, I have little doubt that if I left those kayaking kids and said, "I am off to go get a pedicure, see you in two hours", every one of them would soon be upturned in the lake with half their toes nibbled off by the snapping turtles.

It is almost impossible to resist the siren call of the forbidden. This is a lesson Adam and Eve learned to their most unhappy rebuke. The most ironic thing of that whole Garden of Eden thing is that they knew God was watching.... that God is always watching.  Even Jack the pony checks to make sure Jill isn't there before he crosses the line. It really is hopeless, if we are forced to depend on ourselves. Who of us can deny cheesecake sitting on the counter, no matter how many caloric and cholesterol warning signs are posted? Or any host of forbidden sins? It is easy to point fingers at the "idiots" who come out of lung cancer treatment and light up a cigarette as soon as they leave the hospital....but how about at myself, when I speak a harsh word to a loved one, or gossip, or cling selfishly to my possessions (like my beloved kayak that I won't let anyone else get in......)?  Why is it so hard to be obedient?

As Jack mowed the lawn, Jill told me she had been through a year of very pressing medical issues with Jack. She had been with him night and day through many bouts of colic.
"We formed such a relationship that honestly, if he turned around and started speaking to me, I would not be surprised."
That, I thought, that is the key. Not making noise, or rules, or even dire repercussions, but forging a relationship so based on love and care that hearts long to beat only in rhythm with their Master. We obey because we love, and we know that to disappoint the One who cares for us above all else is not worth any pleasure, not even lush, green, glorious grass.
 Jack glanced at Jill and moved away from the road.

1 Corinthians 4

 ¹ This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. ² Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. ³ I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. ⁴ My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. ⁵ Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.

Patient Endurance

I am here to tell you that 6 hours in 95 degree southern sun is enervating. Enervate is from a latin root which means: to weaken by extraction of the sinews. This is highly descriptive of me at the end of the day yesterday. The sun bleached the calcium from my bones and melted my sinews. I was a slimy slug, crawling boneless and completely enervated to my bed last night.

We started our day by shoveling 400 piles of dog poop at Hollow Creek Farm. For those of you who love dogs and want to support a really fantastic and unique rescue farm, they always need volunteers to help move animal excrement. I normally do not mind this task. I breathe through my mouth so that no molecules enter my sensitive olfactory system. But in 95 degree southern sun, invariably I take an inadvertent sniff of the baking collection and the smell alone could fell stronger women than me. When every poop pile was gone that we could see with the inevitable anoxia from taking as few breaths as possible and resultant double vision, we moved on to our next task- trying to tame the wild mustang Sadie. As the owner of HCF pointed out, this is dangerous. This is trying to pet a 2,000 pound weapon with 4 hammers at the end of catapults and bone crushing razors traps at the mouth.... a weapon, I might add, that is not anxious to be petted. (But don't worry Mom, I am being very careful.)

Our job is to try to convince the mustang that people are not monsters and that she should be happy to let us touch her neck and maybe eventually brush her tangled mane. We have been "taming" her for months now, but with my series of injuries and health issues, I have not been out there in quite a while. We had advanced to the point where I could get a halter over her nose and almost to her ears using carrots as bribes, but she has never let me touch her ears. When she saw us, she trotted over. This is a good sign and shows she connects us with kindness, gentleness, and carrots. Lots of carrots.

She quickly shoved her nose in the halter, having lost no ground despite months of not seeing her. At this pace, I expect to have the halter on her by the time I am 106. Asherel groomed the beautiful, but cranky pony Bob (you can see his story on youtube about the evil pony Bob) while I developed patience trying to get near the ears of the wild mustang. After an hour, she not only let me scritch her behind her ears, but I got in two brief strokes of her neck and one of her shoulder.

With this mind numbing degree of success, we staggered back to our AC and car, and headed out to Lake Wylie where Asherel wanted to kayak to a deserted island and practice skimboarding before our ocean vacation. Her skimboard training on the bedroom carpet was good for a first step, but had gone about as far as it could take her.

First we submerged ourselves in the water and then paddled to the island. Since it was midweek, no one was there giving Asherel the opportunity to wipe out without an audience. Most of the time there was spent just learning how to skim the board across the shallow water properly. She stepped on it a grand total of 3 times, and did remain upright for about a foot. She informed me that was enough for today. There is only so much fear and bruising someone can handle in 24 hours.

It struck me that so many of our endeavors require inestimable patience and slow progress. Very little comes quickly or easily to us. It seems most of success in life depends on not giving up. And wearing sunblock.

Revelation 14:12-13
¹²This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God's commandments and remain faithful to Jesus. ¹³Then I heard a voice from heaven say, "Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on."
"Yes," says the Spirit, "they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them."